


The Woodsman's Daughters

by ThisCat



Series: Transcendence AU [3]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Alternate Universe - Transcendence, Fluff, Found Family, Friendship, Love, M/M, Weirdness, and R!Mabel, but do they count as OCs?, is a tag, no clue how to tag this, normal family, read the description, there's R!Henry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-05
Updated: 2015-10-05
Packaged: 2018-04-24 23:50:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 21,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4938688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThisCat/pseuds/ThisCat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rick stepped off the bus, took a deep breath of air, and wondered once again if he was making a big mistake.<br/>(He wasn't.)</p><p>This is a story which involves confused antlered guys, dryads, anger issues, searching for existential answers, kidnapping children for their own good, more anger issues, too many hugs, bad homes, good homes, finding home, a lot of different headcanons, gender issues, boys in love, friendship, orchids, ice cream, freaking out really bad, punching people, one friendly werewolf, reincarnations, and one certain demon eating popcorn while watching people beating the shit out of each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Short Searches

**Author's Note:**

> Here it is. My contribution to the ficathon.  
> I write a lot of things in this which I have never written before, (actual romance for one,) and would absolutely love any and all comments. Also, if you find a spelling or grammar mistake, please tell me. I am just one person.  
> All of this started from [this](http://transcendence-au.tumblr.com/post/115250630293/tau-chats). The mods are amazing.

Rick stepped off the bus, took a deep breath of air, and wondered once again if he was making a big mistake.

When Rick was only a few days old, a friend of his parents had come for a visit. He told the new parents that, actually, their new baby seemed to be growing invisible horns. No doctors could tell them anything about it, except that it seemed harmless, and they tried not to worry.

As Rick grew older, the friend stayed around to keep them updated on the issue. The horns grew until they looked more like antlers than anything else, and as the years passed, they turned more and more branch-like, until they were about fifty-fifty bone and wood. Rick’s parents searched the family tree, thinking there might have been a forest spirit somewhere along there, but found nothing.

Once he hit puberty, the antlers started growing flowers, then actual fruit a couple of years later, and his parents searched out a preternatural doctor. He redirected them to a soul specialist, with whom Rick had monthly sessions for almost a year. Despite this, the only things they found out about it was that it was either a unique condition, or rare at the one-to-a-billion scale. Also that it was somehow extremely efficient at collecting surrounding magical energy, which had several nice effects on Rick’s physical condition, but no other apparent consequences. It was an unsolved mystery, and it ate at his mind for years.

When he was almost eighteen and was told once again that his flowers were coming in, he decided he had had enough. He started a huge search for anything and everything, human or not, that could have any kind of connection to his situation. For the longest time, the closest thing he had to a clue were the legends and stories of the Woodsman, but seeing as no scholars could seem to agree about what he was or where he came from, and he was practically impossible to find on purpose, that was hardly any clue at all. Then, after ten months of fruitless searching, a cousin of a friend of his drew the connection to a peculiar commune of dryads.

“Like most dryads, they’re really secluded,” she told them on the video call. “They’re not normal dryads, though. Their entire culture is different or something. I think they cut off from the traditional dryads pretty violently, but I don’t remember. I don’t actually know that much about them, which is why it took me so long to think about them, but it’s about the antlers. That’s why they’re special, you see, they’ve got branches that look like antlers on their heads, and that’s kinda what you were looking for, right? Anyways, they live up here in South Dakota, in case you wanted to know.”

And, well, he had to see for sure. Come next spring break he had his bags packed and a ticket for the bus ride.

And now he was here. In the South Dakotan countryside. Alone. Looking for dryads.

What had he gotten himself into?

\---

Oh well, there was no going back now, and this was his best chance of getting answers. He sighed and hefted his bag over a shoulder.

The bus had stopped at a tiny place with a few stores and a small motel. It was intended as a stopping place for truck drivers and travelers on the highway, as there was nothing but forest and farms for miles around.

Rick walked into the motel, then had to wait twenty minutes before someone came to see him.

“How long’re you staying for?” they asked.

“I don’t know,” he answered, “it depends on how quickly I can find what I’m looking for. Could be a day, could be a full week.”

The person behind the counter looked at him with a glimmer of curiosity, but did not ask questions. Instead, they had him pay for a single night and gave him his key.

The room was small and simple, a tiny TV in one corner, a kitchenette in another, a few chairs and a slightly too hard bed, but it was clean and there was free internet.

Rick dropped his bag on the bed and looked through it as he pondered his next move.

He was not carrying much. A few changes of clothes and the pure necessities mostly. He had no clue where to start, or how to go about finding the dryads at all. He sat down heavily on the bed. Most likely, he would just have to ask around, which would involve walking up to random strangers and asking weird questions. He could do that. It would be awkward and horrible, but he could do it. If that did not work, he would have to walk around in the forest, hoping to find something. Urgh. He really, really hoped this would be worth it.

A few minutes later, his stomach growled, and he decided that the very first thing he would do was find something to eat, as all his travelling-snacks were long gone.

The grocery store nearby was actually pretty well stocked. Probably because it was the only place to get anything around there. There was quite a bit of variation in the customers too. He saw a few that looked like baseline humans, but there was also a good selection of woodlanders. Fairies, gnomes, smaller forest trolls, a harried cervitaur and her two children and a few people whose species Rick could not immediately identify. This might have been why it took him so long to see her.

Rick picked through the shelves, looking for something both simple and filling, and ended up with a bit more snack-like items than he probably should. He made his way through the store, turned the corner towards the till- and stopped dead.

There, loading enough groceries to last a family a month onto the belt, was a dryad. A very, very imposing dryad.

Rick was not a short guy. In fact, he was a few inches above average. Adding to that, for some reason, he always tended to feel taller. He would feel like he was towering over people his own height, or like he stood out in a crowd, even though he knew logically that he did not. It was awkward and strange, and it gave him a slouching posture whenever he stood up, but this dryad made him feel short.

She was easily seven feet tall, and she stood to her full height proudly, chin raised and shoulders back. She took exactly as much space as she wanted.

She seemed to be a birch tree, which left her face paper-white, and her hands and feet nearly black, and beneath her skin, there were obvious muscles, far too powerful for a typical feminine figure. Her clothes were simple, pants and a jacket in muted blues, her feet were bare, and her hair looked more like leaves than hair. More importantly, though, more impressively, were the massive, razor-sharp, antler-shaped branches curling out of her head, and Rick had to stop to stare.

Okay, so several of the first steps of his plan just became superfluous. Finding the dryads turned out to be really easy, but they were also, far, far more intimidating than he had ever imagined. What in the name of the presidential Organ Duck was he supposed to do?

_What to do, what to do, what to do._

Just… walk up and talk to her? That was probably what he _should_ do, but… Eurgh, she was kind of terrifying.

Okay, calm down. First, he had to pay for his stuff, then he could talk to the giant dryad. Just a few words, really. _Hey, I was looking for you,_ or, _Excuse me? I think you might have some answers I need,_ or something like that. She, probably, would not do anything horrible to him for that.

He kept trying to figure out what to say as he stood in line. He also kept glancing up at the dryad at the end of the line. She was still bagging her stuff, and with how much she had, she probably would be for a while. He would worry about whether or not she could carry it all, but he was halfway sure she could lift a car over her head if she wanted. Ah, where did his train of thought go?

He got out his card to pay for his snacks, and the cashier gave him a look with just as much warning in it as worry.

“Hey, kid,” he said. “I’m not gonna tell you how to live your life, but if there’s _anyone_ you don’t want to get caught staring at…” He trailed off and sent a pointed look towards the dryad.

“Ah, I- I didn’t mean-“

He was interrupted by a sharp intake of breath to his right, and turned to look straight into the dryad’s deep, black eyes.

She took a deep breath, which she held for several seconds, and then her voice came out about two octaves above anything that would have sounded natural.

“Oh, my gosh! It’s you!”

“Uh- what-” His mind grinded to a halt. What the flying frigate was going on? He stood frozen while she broke into a manic smile.

“It’s you! You’re the kid with the things! You’re the- oh my gosh!”

Bewildered, Rick looked over to the cashier, but he just gave a confused shrug. Before he could do or say anything else, powerful arms snaked around him from behind, and he was suddenly swept off his feet in a bone-crushing hug, while the dryad emitted a loud, shrieking noise.

“Aaaaah! Wha- ack-” He choked on his own attempted protest. Every single person in the store dropped what they were doing to stare at him being crushed like a cherished teddy bear. Several breathless seconds passed before she let up on the pressure enough for him to gasp out an objection.

“Let me down!”

She stopped screeching. She also stopped squeezing so hard, letting him catch his breath, though he was still dangling a few feet in the air. Her arms felt too much like iron for him to even attempt escape, and her face was smoshed somewhat painfully into his shoulder. The branches coming off her head covered his face with newly-spouted leaves.

“Oh,” she said at last. “I’m sorry?”

“If you’re sorry you can put me down.”

“Ummm…” She lifted her head, and he twisted just enough to see her. She looked conflicted. Apologetic, worried and annoyed all at once. “If I do, do you promise not to run away?”

“What?”

Running had honestly not crossed his mind at all. There had been a moment of _oh god why did I come here I’m going to die,_ but he had spent far too much time hoping to talk to her to even consider running away. Should he have?

“Uh, if you promise not to break any more of my ribs?”

She took a deep breath, and he felt himself moving with the rise of her chest. Then he was gently lowered back to the ground and hesitantly let go of.

He immediately sunk to his knees, only resting one hand on the counter. He tried not to breathe too deeply, as his ribs really did hurt. The dryad startled as he collapsed, worry now taking over her features.

“Oh, no. I- I didn’t actually break your ribs, did I?”

He shook his head silently in answer, then he looked up to meet her eyes. They were actual holes, he noticed now, where the iris and lens should be, not just black-colored. It was quite an unsettling sight.

“ _Why?_ ” he asked then, trying to lace his voice with as much bewilderment as possible. She had the decency to look mildly sheepish, though her fingers twitched as if she wanted to grab him again.

“Um- I recognized you standing in line, and then I moved before I could think. Sorry.”

She- what?

“We’ve never met before, though?”

“Noooo…?” She looked almost as confused as he felt. The ensuing silence, as she tried to find an answer, was broken by the cashier clearing his throat.

“Um, I’m sorry, but you’re holding up the line.”

“Oh.”

They both looked up. The line had indeed stopped completely, though most of the customers looked perfectly content with spectating the scene. Yeah, this was probably not the best place to have this conversation. The dryad hurriedly went back to bagging her groceries, and Rick took a deep breath and stood up to pay for his snacks. He hesitated for a few moments, then made a decision. He needed his answers.

“Do you need any help with that?”

She looked back up, or down, at him, and, wow, those eyes were still capital F Freaky, and broke into a big smile.

“No, but I’d love it!”

Rick had to smile through his confused resignation. Then he helped her bag her stuff, and they walked outside together. They stopped just outside the door, and Rick uncertainly reached out a hand.

“I’m Rick, by the way.”

She shifted all her bags over to her left arm, _seriously she was probably strong enough to lift a small car what the-,_ and shook his hand enthusiastically.

“I’m Maiken, and I am _so_ happy to see you!”

She was weird, terrifying and freaky, but there was a strange kind of cuteness to her that kept Rick from getting angry at her antics. She simply seemed so honestly _happy_ to see him. In addition, now that he had calmed down somewhat, he noticed she seemed familiar somehow. As if she was a long lost relative or something. He was completely certain now that these creatures had the answers he had been searching for his whole life.

“Because of these, right?” he asked, and gestured to his own ethereal antlers. She stared above his head as she nodded, obviously capable of seeing what he could not.

“Yeah, it’s- I’ve heard about kids like you from my sisters, but- but I’ve never gotten to meet one myself.”

“So you know what the deal is, then? With this?” he asked, and her eyes came back down to meet his.

“Um, no. Not really, but I bet the matriarchs know!”

“The matriarchs?”

“Yeah!” Maiken twitched strangely as she had to catch herself halfway through gesturing with the shopping bags. “I mean, we’re not a very old commune, but the oldest ones of us are still a few centuries old, you know? They know lots of things! Alternately, I suppose _he’d_ know… but no, you should probably ask the matriarchs. So? What do you say? Want to come visit the Commune?”

Who was _he_? No, wait, not important.

He nodded his affirmative, and she ushered him away up the road towards the forest, chattering continuously. Caught up in the words, he never noticed himself falling into a calm belonging to another life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please click [here](http://ii-thiscat-ii.tumblr.com/post/130513116166/dryads) for a link to my headcanons about dryads. It's not necessary to read it to enjoy the story, but it might provide a bit of background.


	2. Meeting the Commune

Walking into the Commune was a strange experience. One moment it was just him, Maiken and the birds in the forest, the second it was filled with dryads. Almost a dozen just walking around as if they had been there all along. The first thing that struck him was the diversity among them.

Not that Rick was unaccustomed to diversity. His hometown might not be diversity central, but they still got everything from trolls to rabbitaurs alongside the human population, but the dryads were so… _similarly_ diverse.

They were all ridiculously tall, not a single one less than six feet, aside from the children. They all had somewhat antler-shaped branches growing from their heads, and they all had the same creepy eyes, but aside from that, they hardly had anything in common with each other. While even the short ones were tall, the tallest one towered over even _them_. Although most of them had green leaf hair, he saw at least one red maple who redefined the word redhead, and there was one actual _cactus_ with a head full of spikes. Speaking of colors, their skin tones ranged from Maiken’s paper white, through grey, green and every shade of brown to nearly black. Their antlers varied wildly in appearance, with some still budding leaves while others already had flowers, and though every one of them looked muscular enough to wrestle a bear, their body types varied just as much. Some were built like bodybuilders, some were more chubby and curvy, and one with actual bamboo spiraling out of her hair looked like a living stick figure. And every single one of them turned to look at him as he entered.

His ribs were endangered for the second time that day as every nearby dryad converged on him. For several long minutes he was pulled from one pair of arms to another, and after a while he just sort of, let them, and hoped for an end to it. Then a loud, sharp whistle echoed through the forest, and everyone froze.

“One at a time, girls. Give the poor kid some air.”

The press of people around Rick let up a little, but not completely.

“Girls!”

The voice was strict and authoritative, and at the second exclamation, the crowd finally spread enough for Rick to see the speaker. She was as tall as anyone else there, and some sort of conifer tree, judging from her branches. Age wise, she looked like she was in her forties, which Rick remembered meant at least a century old to dryads. She was staring at the group of tree-people like a mother ready to scold her children for mistreating the cat. Then she turned her eyes to Rick, who was still being held in a vice grip by one of them, two kids latched onto his leg and around his waist.

“What’s your name, kid?”

“Um,” was all he could say before he changed hands and his face was mashed into the front of a sweater. A second passed before Maiken answered the question.

“His name’s Rick! I found him at the store. Can I show him around?”

“You’re still on shopping duty. You can talk to him all you want later, but for now, you need to put this away. You three help her out.”

There was a bit of grumbling from somewhere Rick suspected was the ‘you three’ that had been singled out, but soon enough he heard the sound of footsteps moving away. A few seconds passed where he just sort of resigned himself to being a teddy bear, and then the old conifer tree spoke again.

“Right. Anyone here _not_ gotten a hug yet?”

Two seconds of silence.

“Great. Then you can leave him alone. Now.”

Complaints started rising from the crowd, but the ones who currently had Rick in a too-powerful grip let go, and only the smallest of the kids stayed latched onto his leg. Most of the crowd reluctantly dissipated, passing between the trees with strangely longing glances back, but a few stayed behind to argue.

“That’s so unfair, Katherine,” one of them said. “Us younger ones’ve never met a kid like him before, not like you have! And now we’re hardly allowed to even touch him, just because of _your_ friggin’ rules?”

She was working herself up into a rage, and Rick felt the very rational need to seek cover grow in his mind. The conifer, Katherine, answered with quite a bit of heat of her own.

“The rules are there for a reason, Lorna. Now _get back to what you were doing!_ ”

“ALWAYS YOU GOTTA TELL US WHAT TO DO! What the HELL gave YOU THE RIGHT TO DECIDE?”

Oh no, oh no, oh no.

Only the kid stuck to Rick’s leg kept him from running now, as the two giant dryads started an actual shouting match only ten feet away from him. It stayed as nothing but shouting until the younger one, Lorna, kicked a pinecone from the ground and chucked it as hard as she could at Katherine, who promptly shouted, “YOU WANNA GO?” And then they were wrestling on the ground. Sort of. Well, it would have been wrestling if wrestling involved hair pulling and kicking beneath the belt.

Actually, it kind of looked like they were trying to kill each other.

Rick was dumbstruck. Of course, he had heard that these particular dryads had a bit of a violent temper, but this was ridiculous. The two of them were lost to the world, practically growling like animals, and Rick wondered if he would be able to find his way back if he ran now, and if it would even be possible with the child on his leg. How much did he want his answers again?

Focused as he was on the fight, he only noticed another dryad coming up behind him when an arm snaked around his shoulders and gave him a quick, but hard squeeze. He looked up to see another cactus grinning down at him.

She was older than the first cactus had been, maybe around Katherine’s age, and her smile was just on the edge of friendly mocking. She gave off a typical ‘cool mom’ vibe, and the little shoulder-squeeze she had going on was surprisingly reassuring. She looked up at the fight going on and sighed.

“They’re really being silly today, aren’t they?”

Rick was just about to ask what in the world was silly about this when there was a natural lull in the fight. The two fighters stood about three feet apart and looked ready to go at it again any second. The cactus dryad whistled loudly and walked towards them.

“Really, Katherine? Really? Act your age!”

Katherine just sent her the evil eye, but the cactus seemed unperturbed. For a second, Rich thought she would break up the fight like any sane person would have done, given the chance, but then she pointed out into the woods and continued.

“Go fight in the clearing like grownups, dammit!”

Moments later, Katherine had picked up her opponent and flung her through the trees, following in a storm and leaving Rick and the cactus alone. It took him a while to figure out how his mouth worked again.

“Is that… okay?”

“What?”

The cactus turned around with a smile that said she was not as surprised at his question as she pretended to. Then she laughed.

“Yeah, yeah. Don’t worry. We’re no fragile flowers, and Kathy knows not to hurt her kids really bad. One of the first things you have to learn with a temper like that is to hit so it hurts, not so it lasts. Anyways, I’m Loreta.”

She held out a hand, and Rick found himself taking it, only to be pulled into yet another rough hug.

He lost his breath halfway through saying his own name, but Loreta just laughed again and told him she knew. Everyone did by now, apparently.

He laughed with her out of reflex, and had to think over how bizarre the situation was. It was weird, and confusing, and slightly terrifying, and yet… a part of him thought it felt right. This place smelled like home, he realized, even though his house smelled nothing like the forest. It smelled like something home-like, and even when he should be scared, he felt himself relax.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Here](http://ii-thiscat-ii.tumblr.com/post/130549536641/scetchy-picture-of-two-of-the-dryads-from-my-new) is a picture of two of the dryads who show up in this story. A cactus and a stick of bamboo.


	3. A fight, and Dinner

Loreta gave him no time to breathe, but pulled him along further into the forest. Soon he was met by a seemingly endless flow of dryads, all of whom wanted hugs. At least, aside from the youngest children, they managed to keep it somewhat systematic, not as overwhelming as the first few minutes had been. Quite a few of them introduced themselves by name, but he had a hard time remembering them all.

After a while, he asked Loreta what was up with all the hugging, and she waved her hand in the air.

“Eh, you want answers to stuff like that, you should talk to Kathy,” she said. “She’ll be way better at explaining this stuff once she calms down. Should be pretty soon now, wanna go and see?”

Before he had the time to answer, she grabbed his hand and dragged him through the forest again. They came to the end of the small natural ledge of a short drop down to a clearing. Some places around the clearing, big rocks had been placed like spectator stands, and a number of dryads sat watching. The ground in the clearing was trampled flat, and in the middle of it, the fight from earlier was still going on, though it seemed to be winding down.

Rick still could not understand how this was any kind of safe. The two of them still looked like they were trying to kill each other, now to the cheers of the spectators. It was crazy, crazy, crazy, but interesting too. He had never been one for watching sports on the screen, but every once in a while he would sit down to watch something martial arts related. He liked the elegance of it, the efficiency of movement, and this was very much like that. There was no style to their fighting that he recognized. It was straightforward and brutal fury, but both of them were obviously experienced. Katherine especially looked as if every single punch and dodge was second nature. Rick found himself enraptured by the sight, even as he worried for them.

After a few more minutes, it winded down completely. After being thrown about fifteen feet, Lorna stayed down, and Katherine joined her on the ground seconds later. The audience broke up with scattered cheering and applause, and then dispersed back between the trees. They lay there in silence for a while before Lorna sat up with a groan, looking guilty, if anything.

“I’m sorry,” she muttered, only barely loud enough for Rick to hear.

“Never say you’re sorry, Lorna,” Katherine said, rubbing her eyes with the heels of her hands.

Lorna looked up sharply in surprise before looking back down and smiling. Then Katherine got up and sat down beside her, throwing a hand over her shoulder, and she leaned back onto Katherine and relaxed. Katherine rubbed her arm comfortingly and spoke in a low voice. It was sweet and warm, and surprisingly affectionate for two people who had been beating the shit out of each other only minutes earlier. No hard feelings, no pain or guilt, only two sisters comforting each other, as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

“Told you it was fine,” Loreta said, after nudging him in the side with her elbow. “Nothing wrong with blowing off a bit of steam. Now go talk to her.” And she pushed him into the clearing.

He looked back at her nervously, and she waved him on with a smile, so he started walking towards the two on the ground.

Katherine saw him coming and spoke a few words to Lorna, who looked up and smiled. A few more words were exchanged, and then Lorna was walking into the forest with a wave, and Katherine stood, brushing off her clothes. Rick stopped, then gestured hopelessly around him.

“What.”

She smiled apologetically and bowed her head.

“I’m sorry, kid. You shouldn’t have had to see that so soon after arriving. I lost my head.”

The words resonated in his mind, and he smiled back despite himself and said, “What was it you said? Never say you’re sorry?”

She laughed then.

“I know, but I’m a lot older than Lorna. I really should have known better. We wouldn’t want you running away immediately, right?”

He laughed with her and stepped closer. Her smile was warm in a very trustworthy way. If Loreta seemed like a cool mom, he realized, Katherine was the kind of mother who would sit you down and explain all the wonders of the universe, then tell you she loved you more than any of them. Her knuckles were bruised slightly from the fight, and the contrast really should have been stranger.

“I have to admit I considered it,” he said, “but I can’t. I came up here for answers, and I don’t want to leave empty-handed, no matter how insane everything seems. I would like an explanation though.”

She reached an arm around his shoulders and ruffled his hair, and it was possibly the nicest hug he had gotten all day.

“Of course, kiddo. I’ll explain all I can. I’m starving, though, and it’s dinnertime. What do you say we do that first, hm?”

Rick remembered how little he had eaten since leaving home, and agreed. Thus, she led him off the clearing through the forest. Three times on their way, they stopped to give another dryad a chance to hug Rick, and he had to ask.

“This is really weird. What’s the thing with all the hugging, anyway?”

She hmm’d a bit, thinking it over.

“Well, you’re… special to us, for reasons that… that I will have to try to explain later. People like you… you feel familiar to us, in a way. We’re drawn to you naturally. I’m sorry, it’s the only way I can describe it.”

“No, I get it,” he said, “I think I’m getting something similar. I’ve had some weird kind of déjà vu all since I got here.”

He really did. He was sure, absolutely sure that he had never experienced anything like this before, and that the part of him that felt it was familiar was a part that had not existed until recently. It was just another thing in a long string of bizarre things though, and he refused to worry about it.

They entered another clearing between the trees. This one was much smaller than the one with the spectator stands, and the ground was covered in clover and weeds. In the middle of it stood several long tables covered with dishes and cutlery. A number of dryads already sat around the tables eating, and more were arriving every second. Off to one side stood an old shed with its door wide open, and through it Rick could see what looked like a mix between a kitchen and a storeroom.

He nodded questioningly towards the shed, and Katherine explained while she sat him down at one of the tables.

“Right, that’s where we keep all the stuff we own that can’t stay out in the rain, since we just sleep in our trees if it gets bad. Mostly anything electric. Guests can stay there as well, in the rare event that we have them.”

Conversation lulled a little after that, as they started eating. The food was mostly vegetarian, as was expected for dryads, but there were dishes in between that were distinctly not. It reminded him of what his friend’s cousin had said about these dryads. That they broke off from traditional dryadic society rather violently. He looked down the table at the boisterous gathering of trees and compared them to the quiet and withdrawn dryads he knew from other places. Then he thought back to the fight that seemed so normal here, and he concluded that yes, that sounded probable.

He ate in silence for a while. The food was pretty good, really, and the conversations going around the table were interesting. Many of the things they said about plants went straight over his head, but they also talked about the latest episodes of popular shows, about news from the outside world, about new friends the children made at school and all kinds of interestingly mundane subjects. He heard quite a few people talking about himself as well, which was strange. At one point halfway through dinner, he heard raised voices from another table. Then someone shouted, “NOT AT THE DINNER TABLE,” and the bickering voices disappeared between the trees.

“What is that about, anyway?” he asked Katherine then, “With the clearing and everything.”

She sighed deeply.

“It’s… necessary,” she said, eventually. “We’re born with a very violent temper, as you might have heard. We’ve learned long ago that it’s impossible to control. We can lock it down for a while, sure, but that just explodes, and we can learn when something’s not worth getting angry over, but we will always lose our heads sometimes, and then things break.

We can’t control it, so we’ve learned to contain it. We just accept that sometimes these things happen, and they’re no one’s fault. That’s what the ‘never say you’re sorry’ thing was about. We never blame anyone for what they said or did during a rage, and we keep it to the clearing to make sure the surroundings survive. We don’t learn never to hit anyone, but we learn only to hit those who can hit back just as hard.

It’s not always so easy, but it’s all we have”

“You take care of each other,” he realized, remembering the post-fight scene from earlier. She gave him a smile.

“Yes. We’re the only ones who can. We’d never fit anywhere else. It’s not like they knew how to handle us. _Know_ how to handle us.”

The children weaving between the trees caught his attention, and he saw how the closest of their older sisters always had an eye on them.

“You really are just a bunch of mothers, aren’t you?” he asked, and she laughed.

“Now _that_ , that is true.”


	4. Explanations

By the time dinner was over, it became clear to Rick that though the adult dryads often managed to cope with only getting one hug, then leaving him alone, the kids were impossible to pry off. He just had to deal with them clutching onto him for the longest of times. Lucky for him he liked kids almost as much as they liked him. He and Katherine decided to keep up their conversation in spite of the clingy children.

“So,” he said, after managing to maneuver himself out of his chair, “what are you guys anyways? I mean, where did you come from?”

“It’s a bit of a long story,” she said, and led him back through the forest.

After a walk that took much longer than it would have without the endless hugging, they came upon a strange figure between the trees. It took Rick several heartbeats to realize what it was. Five trees had been braided together and shaped to grow into the shape of a man, much too tall to be human. His eyes were holes defined by metal rings, and his head was crowned by branches and endless flower crowns. It took him another heartbeat to recognize it.

“That’s the Woodsman, isn’t it?”

She reached out and brushed a hand over the surface of the figure, looked up into his empty eyes.

“Yes. That’s who we are, really. What we call ourselves in secret.” She looked down at Rick again with a solemn smile. “Others call us antlered dryads, or vengeful dryads, but we call ourselves the Woodsman’s Daughters.”

Rick had been to holy places before, with school or for weddings, but never in his life had he felt something so sacred as he did now, standing in front of a flower-adorned figure in the middle of the forest, being told the secrets of an entire clan.

“I- I don’t really know whether to ask why, or how.”

“What do you know about the Woodsman?” she asked.

“Not much,” he said. “I came across a bit of information while looking for my answers, but no one seems to know much about him, other than that he likes children, sometimes cuts people’s hands off and he showed up at least thirty years after the transcendence.”

She looked back up and kept silent for a while, thinking it over.

“We do know,” she said, “that he showed up over three hundred and fifty years ago, though exactly when, only one person knows, and he refuses to tell us. We believe _he_ is where he came from, too. The demon, Alcor.”

“Wait, Alcor the Dreambender? As in, the single most powerful demon ever?”

“Yes. We think, and we have very good reasons to think, that he had a hand in the Woodsman’s creation. It doesn’t matter though. Whether or not he had demonic origins, the Woodsman is not demonic. What exactly it is he is, it’s true that no one knows for sure. Except the demon, I suppose. The important part is that the Woodsman carries very powerful magic, and over time, it seeped into the ground of the forests he walked. That kind of magic is slow on its own, but it will always have an effect eventually. We dryads, who are born from the forest’s magic, were the ones who felt it. The oldest ones of us were born only a few decades more than two hundred years ago.

We were born into normal dryad communes all over the world, though more of us on this continent, and mostly concentrated up north. No one knew what we were or where we came from, and they tried to raise us properly, but, well… We all ended up running here sooner or later. It’s better that way. This is almost the only place we’re born now, too. We’re concentrating the magic.

Either way, the first of us were born into communes who worshipped Pan, the nature god, for the most part. That lifestyle? The quiet, synch with nature, elegantly dancing kind of living? It never agreed with us, but… Pan might or might not have had a hand in the creation of dryads at all, but we know we come from the Woodsman, one way or another. He is our ancestor, our Pop-pops. He watches over us.”

Nearly a minute passed in silence before Rick dared to speak again.

“I’m betting Pan wasn’t very happy about that.”

“Oh he tried,” she said, and the smile she shot him this time carried a measure of maliciousness. “He tried to make us go back, but we wouldn’t. This forest isn’t his anymore.”

They laughed together then, she at the memory and he at the pure absurdity, and the silent spell broke. Rick made a mental note to ask for some personal stories later. There seemed to be quite a lot of interesting ones around here. Again, they started moving through the forest.

“Then where do I come in?” he asked.

“To be honest, I’m not completely sure,” she answered, as she showed off their fields of flowers covering the forest floor. “We’ve had visits from people like you only twice before. The first one, well, we were still very young, and had little to no self-control. She surprised us, we surprised her, and we managed to scare her off within a day. Would have been earlier if she had the chance, I think. You understand.”

He did.

“The second one, we were older then. We managed to set down some rules to make things easier for him, and he stayed around for a little while, but we still don’t know what he was, what you are. I’m sorry. I can guess, though?”

He sighed. Complete answers really were too much to hope for. Who ever got that anyways?

“I suppose that’s all I can ask.”

“Yes, I’m sorry. I don’t know what you are, but I know it’s rare. Possibly as rare as only one person at a time at all, which I suppose might make it reincarnative, but I don’t know, and I don’t think anyone else does either.”

“Except possibly the demon,” he said, echoing her earlier words, and it hit him that _he_ had probably been who Maiken spoke of in passing, back at the store. Katherine gave him a slightly concerned look.

“Except possibly the demon, yes, but…

Look, Alcor feels somewhat responsible for us, I think. He brings us our lost sisters, and if we are really in trouble, and the Woodsman can’t help us himself, Alcor sometimes helps us out for free. He comes visiting sometimes, even brings Mizar along, and _that_ is an interesting soul, let me tell you, but he’s still a demon. For something like answers, he always demands a price. I think he enjoys watching us struggle to figure it out on our own.

So, yes. He has the answers you seek, and if you want to ask him I won’t stop you, but I wouldn’t recommend it.”

They stood looking at each other for a few seconds before Rick exhaled with a shudder.

“No, don’t worry. I’m not that desperate. I can make do with your guessing.”

“Good,” she said, and smiled.

The next few hours were spent going through every theory she could think of, from the reasonable to the completely outlandish. Rick was introduced properly to several more dryads, and ended up spending a while playing with the children, which was what he was doing when he realized it was getting dark, and that he needed to go back to the motel.

The bamboo dryad he had seen early on, Jia Yu, followed him all the way to the door.

“Are you coming back tomorrow?” she asked, so honestly hopeful it was almost painful.

“Well,” he said. “I already came here prepared to stay the full week if I had to. Might as well, right? Though I don’t think I’ll want to spend those nights in a ratty motel. Just tell someone to come pick me up tomorrow, okay?”

She beamed at him and said she would, and then he said his goodbyes and went inside. Slumping down on the bed, he finally remembered to check his phone. Three texts from Darren and two missed calls from mom. Oh well. He clicked the call button and waited. She picked up at the second ring.

“Rick?”

“Hi mom.”

“How’d it go?”

“Great. Really, wow… It went great. First of all, I think I’m staying the week. Second of all… wow, let me tell you…”


	5. Katherine's story

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That was the first part of the story, guys. Now there's a bit of an interlude, before the second part starts. The second part is basically a completely different story, so if you want to comment on this one, you might want to do that here.

It was an early morning a few days into his stay at the commune that Rick sat down and asked Katherine what it had been like for her, to run away from home, and how life had been before she did. It took several minutes before she answered, and when she did, she sounded both younger and older than Rick had ever heard her before.

“Well,” she said. “It’s a long story.

I was born in Canada, actually, in a commune of evergreens just north of the border in, I think it was 230 AT. Sometime around then. And, well, I don’t want to be cliché, but I knew from a young age that I was a little different. The antlers and the eyes were only a small part of it, though that was always the first thing people noticed.

Many of my sisters went to school, I remember, and became a part of outside society one way or another, but I was never given that opportunity. I was kept away from outsiders as much as possible, kept in the Commune at all times, sent away into the forest if we ever had guests. I thought at the time they were ashamed of me, and maybe they were, I broke with all their traditions, after all. I understand their reasoning a little better now. I don’t think they were right, but I understand them.

I was tall for my age, and much stronger than my peers. I could lift my sisters above my head without much trouble from a very young age, and I was far, far more confrontational than them. I had a quick temper, practically explosive, and from there stemmed all my problems.

I got temper tantrums, all the time. If I felt I had been wronged, I got angry. If I felt belittled or was brushed off, I got angry. If I was tired or sad or hurt, I got angry, and they didn’t understand. They couldn’t understand. I was like nothing they had ever known before, so they got angry in return. I grew up learning that there was something wrong with my anger, that I should be controlling myself, and that I was in the wrong when I couldn’t. I was taught to bottle up my emotions, to hide them away, and to be ashamed when I let others see. I pushed someone during a tantrum when I was very little, and she fell and got hurt, and I had never even heard of anyone who hurt someone only because they were angry, so I thought something was wrong with me. I spent so much time in my young years just hiding away and crying because I was wrong, I was broken somehow and I didn’t understand why. Of course, with all that weighing on my mind, I only got angry that much easier.

It’s hard to explain now, what my tantrums felt like to me. There was the fear, of course, when I felt one coming and could do nothing to stop it, when the pure anger and the unfairness of everything threatened to drown me, then the immediate shame afterwards. The shame was almost a constant in my life, because I would come down from a tantrum, righteous or not, and know that I’d hurt someone, that I’d failed again, and I would meet those scornful faces and retreat in shame. They never listened to me, of course, never cared much _why_ I got angry. I was just a silly, possibly mentally ill, girl to them. The shame from that, for exploding for no “proper” reason, it stayed with me for days afterwards, until I inevitably exploded again. I hated losing control like that. I hated myself and my emotions for taking away my control over my body. It was horrible.

That was only part of it though, because some part of me, some part I never even acknowledged to myself, some part of me enjoyed it. Normally I would bottle up my anger, hide my emotions, swallow my words. Normally my anger had to turn back on me while I tried to pretend it didn’t exist, but when I got angry? When I snapped and lashed out, I could say all the things I always really thought about people, without minding what was proper. I could walk without watching my step, move without being constantly mindful, I could hold my head high and use my antlers as a display of threat, not a mark of shame. I could be everything I was and wanted to be, but then it would end and I would go back to that small, crying broken girl I knew I really was.

\---

I was twenty, I think, give or take a year, when things changed. Still in my teens by your count, as dryads age slower than humans do. There was a new baby being born in our commune. I was there, as I always were, because I was on constant child-watching duty, by my own choice as much as theirs. It went as well as it could have, the new child forming from surrounding magic as her small brush of new needles met the air. They named her Ellen, and passed her around so that all her new sisters could see, and I cried when I saw her. She was born strong and healthy, but they acted as if she was sick, because her eyes were deep, uncanny black, and she had on her head the twig-like beginnings of antlers like mine.

I still can’t tell you what I felt when I saw Ellen for the first time. I had gone my whole life thinking I was the only one like me in the world, that I was different, and worthless because of that, and here was a little girl who was just like me, and it changed my entire worldview. On the other hand, here was a little girl, my little sister, who might have to grow up with exactly the same faults and broken parts that I had, and it hurt. I cried over her the rest of the day, hoping against hope that it was just the antlers, and not the personality problems she had.

I watched her closely from then on, trying to protect her, in a way, and I realized a few things. She wasn’t broken. There was nothing wrong with her at all. Yes, she had her temper tantrums, but while the other child-watchers worried about it, I looked at her reasons for being angry and I understood. She never snapped without a good reason, she just snapped hard when she did. She was a big child, and she was loud and happy. There was nothing of the traditional mysterious and elegant dryad in her, but she shone like a star in her own right, and she was perfect.

There was no way she was broken, and, I realized, neither was I. I remember the exact moment that realization hit me, that if there was nothing wrong with her, and there wasn’t, she was my perfect little sister and I loved her to bits, there was nothing wrong with me. I remember laying down on the ground and _screaming_ in anger and sobbing so hard it hurt my chest. The dam burst, so to say, and my relief mixed with twenty years of bottled emotions to create nothing but immobilizing primal rage.

In the middle of it all I remember Ellen sitting down next to me, asking if I was okay, and I pulled her close and told her yeah, I was better than okay, so please don’t worry about your big sister Kathy, no?

\---

In a way, things got better after that. I was happier, more in control of myself. I smiled more and fought less, but I also felt less at home in the Commune than ever before. It wasn’t until Ellen was three years old that I got off my ass and did something about it.

I remember coming back from one of my few trips into the forest and hearing shouting. I don’t remember what it was, but something had made Ellen really, really angry, and I walked in just as she was coming down from her tantrum. I saw her slowly curl in on herself as her mind caught up and told her she’d probably done something bad, and I saw a half-circle of our older sisters standing around her, ready to reprimand her and scorn her for her slip in control, and it was all so painfully familiar. It reminded me of all the times they had done that to me when I was little, and not so little, and how much it hurt. It reminded me of a pain they had planted so deep in me that even now I can still feel it. I- I put myself between them.

I don’t remember any of the words that were used that day, but I remember asking at least once how they dared even think about hurting one of our children like that. The screaming match ran hotter and for longer than any I’d had before, because for once I wasn’t holding back at all. I had been angry for my own sake an uncountable number of times before, nearly constantly, but this was the first time I was angry for someone else. I was righteous fury incarnate, and I refused to back down.

That night I uprooted my tree.”

“Wait, you can-“

“Yes, we can do that.”

“But-“

“Look, just like how the physical body of a dryad can sleep within its tree, the physical tree can be carried within the body of the dryad. It’s not exactly comfortable to be uprooted, but it’s a practical skill to have.

Either way, I uprooted my tree, had Ellen do the same, and then we ran.

I’m not sure what I was looking for in the beginning, to be honest. I just knew that I needed to get her somewhere better. I needed to let her grow up somewhere she wouldn’t be shunned for her own nature, somewhere she could grow into herself properly. I knew they followed after us once they saw that we’d ran, but even while carrying Ellen I was faster than them, so we just had to keep moving. We crossed the border to try to shake them off, but it didn’t work very well.

We found quite a few other dryad communes on our way, and they mostly let us stay the night. I never explained where we were from or why we were travelling, just asked if we could stay a few nights on our way. Most of them said yes. I never dared stay one place for long, and I didn’t really want to. While each commune was different in its own way, I could see that none had the capacity to deal with creatures like us. Dryads are dryads at heart, and our natures were simply different.

The first five or six communes we passed through had never seen anything like us before. Then we came to the one Marissa lived with.

When we met the first dryads of her commune and I saw the spark of recognition in their eyes, I was afraid at first that our pursuers had sent word ahead somehow, but they welcomed us as much as any previous commune we’d seen, if with a little more caution.

I was surprised to meet another dryad with antlers on our travels, but it was nothing compared to how surprised Marissa was to see me. She kind of just stared for the longest time before collapsing onto me, crying. When she’d stopped crying, we sat down and talked and talked. We had so much in common we became best friends almost immediately. Ellen and I stayed there for six days before moving on, longer than we had any place before.

Marissa wanted us to stay. I remember it was the last day before we left, and she asked why we couldn’t just stay there with her commune. I was tempted, I really was, but for one thing, I knew there were still people following us and I didn’t want them to catch up, for another, I had seen in my time staying there that the way they treated Marissa was very similar to how my family had treated me. My staying there would have made things better, but it would never be a proper home for me, nor Ellen. That’s when I explained exactly why we were running, and asked her to come along with us instead. She… well, she flipped out.

You have to understand, I had had three years to get used to the fact that I was not alone and not broken, Marissa had had six days. There was still a big part of her that had never known anything but her family there, that thought she had to stay because that is what one does. She heard me saying that I had uprooted myself, ran away from home, and brought along a three years old child. Everything about it screamed ‘wrong’ to her. I guess there was a sort of backlash from that as well, because if I’d done something wrong, maybe there was something wrong with us after all, like she’d always believed. Suffice to say, there were a lot of confusing and contrasting feelings and the result was that she got pissed off at me.

Of course, her getting angry got me angry. In half a minute we were shouting at each other. In five minutes we were throwing things, and after fifteen we were fist fighting. I’m not entirely sure when we forgot the original point of the fight and just fought for the fun of it, but half an hour later we had scared off all of the rest of the commune, except Ellen, and lay exhausted on the ground just laughing. It was exhilarating. Neither of us had ever had anyone get angry back, not in that way. Never shouted at someone who could give as much as they could take, never punched anyone who just got up and punched back, never felt so safe in letting go completely. We had never felt so light, and so right, coming down from a tantrum, and we had never had that much fun. Right then and there, I got my first true taste of home.

The commune let us stay for another night if we promised to leave at first light. Some of them had been around and gotten scared when I asked Marissa to come with us, because they might not have liked her that much, but she was still _their_ sister, and no runaway should be allowed to take her away from them. After witnessing the beginning of our argument though, and seeing the damage we left on the environment and the bruises we left on each other, I suppose they felt safe in assuming she’d be staying. They must have been quite surprised to find she left with us in the middle of the night.

\---

Things got both easier and harder after that. Easier because Ellen and I weren’t alone anymore, and that always makes everything better, and harder because we had more pursuers. We also started actively looking for others like ourselves.

It was surprisingly easy, really, to find them. There was one on average maybe once in ten communes? But there were quite a few communes who had heard stories from others, and when we looked for it, seeing the signs of recognition got simple enough. Often, they would simply tell us the stories when we asked, but as the news of our circumstances ran through the grapevine, fewer and fewer of them were willing to help us. But, we were always successful in having our antlered sisters join our journey.

Several of them had scruples, initially, like Marissa did, but the pull of true family was always strong enough to pull them along. Many had already entertained the thought of running, and came with us within minutes, but most of them… most of them were too young to truly understand. I suppose you could call what we did kidnapping. We knew that they would most likely grow up miserable with their original communes, and we also knew that we could not guarantee a better life as long as we were running, but… but we couldn’t just leave them. They were _our_ children, as much as they were anyone else’s, and that instinct to protect our young is another thing we all had in common. Maybe we did kidnap them, according to the law, maybe we did, but we also brought them home, kept them safe, kept them close. They were the reason we were able to keep running for as long as we did, but, well…

They caught up in the end, of course, and we would have been ended there if it hadn’t been for him.

That’s when I saw him for the first time.”

“Saw who?”

“Our Pop-pops. The Woodsman.

It’s… That is an incident I will never forget. Not if I live to see ten thousand years. I’m still not sure if I can find the words to describe it. Okay…

Imagine this. We’d been running almost without rest for the last forty hours. The bigger ones of us had been taking turns to carry the smaller ones, we were tired out of our minds, too tired to speak, we had been running in silence for several hours, we were sore and scratched up, and we were nearing the end of a hunt we were sure to lose. None of us wanted to go back there, not now. We didn’t think we’d be able to go back after knowing a better place was possible. We were all too tired to truly panic, but you get the idea.

I don’t remember the run itself so well. I just kept my focus on passing the next tree, scaling the next rock. I was trying not to think, I think. We were in that part of the forest where it’s dusky dark even in the middle of the day, and it was evening, so those things in front of us were really the only things I could focus on. And then I noticed a light.

It was a flickering, blue light, as from a flame, and it was moving towards us. We could feel his approach as well, through the ground. The entire area around him was devoid of surplus energy, like how the root-area of an oak is drained of nutrition. He gathered everything, had been for a long time, and his presence reverberated through the earth. We were forced to stop our running, out of fear or awe I am not sure. And then he walked out of the woods ahead of us.

It was incredible, and terrifying, kind of like seeing Ellen for the first time, or meeting Marissa, if either of them had been near-ancient and incredibly powerful, so not like that at all, really. He was really not that old, I think, in comparison to our own elders, but he seemed ancient. He had seen more, done more. He was a different kind of being. He carried a danger with him that we could hardly grasp at the time, and it was not just the fire, or the axe. It was the way he moved when it looked like he shouldn’t. He was a rooted tree walking, as if it was natural and simple. His antlers branched off between the branches of the forest, and from them hung a hundred lengthy gossamer threads, tied, I think, to severed body parts, which snaked between his own branches and the forest’s. None of it got snagged as he walked, even though it was tangled too deep to ever get free. For every step he took, everything was just the right shape to allow him to take that step. The forest moved for him without moving. It was… incredible. I remember thinking that if I were to die there, at least my death would be worth something.

His eyes met mine, I knew they did, even though they looked more like holes than eyes, and I felt… safe… I think. Protected. Then he spoke, and his words were less words than they were intentions and concepts, using my own thoughts as a conduit. Our own natural energy synched so easily with him.

 ** _MY SPROUTLINGS,_** he said.

A severed hand on a string landed on my head then, and if I had been less tired, less wrung-out by panic, I might have screamed. It just, patted me on the head though. Like the older sisters of a commune might do to good children. It was nice and affectionate, and though my logic kept saying it was wrong, in my heart it felt right.

 ** _GOOD SPROUTLINGS,_** he said, and I think he must have noticed our pursuers then, or maybe he knew all along, because the next thing we knew, the hands were pushing us to keep going, and he walked past us.

**_RUN ALONG, SPROUTLINGS. POP-POPS WILL TAKE CARE OF THE MONSTERS._ **

We all knew what was about to happen, and Pop-pops had told us to run, so we did. The forest opened up in front of us and we saw light again. The sun was setting and dyeing everything orange, but the moon was almost full and rising from the other side. We had light, and behind us, the forest darkened.

We made camp less than half an hour later, and slept until far past sunrise, but no one ever saw hide nor hair of our pursuers again.

\---

We travelled like that for a long time. A few years I think. They sort of bled into each other. It was late summer when we finally arrived here.

We weren’t the first ones to settle here though. That was Loreta’s group.

We were twenty somewhat-adults by then. A few more teens and a lot of children. We had almost given up hope of ever finding a place to stay for good, some of the youngest children hardly even remembered a life before the road, and we tried to keep hope up, we did, but it was getting hard, and then…

It was a group of fairies who told us first. They seemed to recognize our kind, and we thought maybe there was a commune nearby with one of us in it, but it seemed different. We asked them and they told us of a different group like ours, who had taken residence in a part of the forest only a few miles away from where we were, and we didn’t dare to believe it. It was too good to be true.

We didn’t tell the children why we’d changed direction. We didn’t want to give them too much hope unless we were sure. I almost cursed my own hope, to be honest, but it refused to go away. It gathered in my chest until I couldn’t breathe, because maybe, maybe finally we could find what we’d be looking for, and I knew that it would probably turn out to be nothing.

Walking in there for the first time, and meeting the Commune, it was like being punched in the face. They welcomed us immediately, just happy to find more family, and I grabbed the nearest person and cried like I hadn’t since I left Canada. I was twenty five, just about, and for the first time in my life, I was home.”


	6. Assaulted

Coming home after spending a week with the dryads was… boring. At least Rick thought so at first. In the forest, he had been energized in a way he had never felt before, and coming back to the gray of the city left him tired in a way he really could not explain. He was happy, of course. Much more so than he had been when he left, but the concept of going back to school, of spending time around mostly human beings again, being surrounded by people who neither knew nor cared who he was, it felt too drab and _regular_ compared to the sheer green of the spring of South Dakota.

Or so he thought, anyway, for the first few hours.

He met up with his friend Darren before school on Monday, as they always did when the moon phases let Darren go to school at all, still kind of tired from getting home late Sunday night. Darren understood, as anyone would on an early Monday morning, and tried to keep the questions to a minimum, which really only served to stretch the Q&A-session over four hours of classes and into lunch hour, at which point they had finally gone over everything that had happened to Rick during spring break. Now they were standing in relative silence as they waited in line in the cafeteria.

This was the point where Rick realized that the city might not be merely gray and lifeless. In fact, something had just caught his eye that was decidedly _not_ gray or lifeless. Rather, it was colorful enough that it stood clearly out to him even from across the room. It was a person. A male person actually, if Rick’s eyes told him the truth, though with all that glitter and pink and- was that yellow? No, no definitely male clothes, but extremely feminized. He was, well, Rick had no better word for it, gay. He was the gayest thing Rick had seen in his life and he was _adorable_.

It was hard to see from this distance, but his smile seemed to light up his immediate surroundings by several lumens. He was talking about something to the girl across from him, and he punctuated his speech with small, really cute, flutters of his hands. Were his hands really that small and delicate? It was hard to see properly from so far away.

Rick only remembered where he was, in the middle of the cafeteria queue, when the girl behind him cleared her throat and nodded pointedly at where Darren and the rest of the queue had left him. Darren turned at the sound and raised an eyebrow.

“Zoning out on me already? I mean, I totally get it, it’s Monday, but sheesh.”

“Uh,” Rick said, looking back and forth between Darren and the glitter guy. “You know who that is?”

“Who? Oh, Minnow.”

“Minnow?” Rick asked, and already the name was running circles in his head. Minnow, Minnow, Mini, Minmin, Minney, _Minnow_. What a beautiful name.

Darren nodded, “yeah, I don’t know. He’s a transfer student, family moved here while you were away, I think he’s talked to, like, everyone by now? Very friendly, very… sparkly, mostly friends with girls. I think most guys are put off by his, uh, aggressive flirting.” Here he had to stop to grab his food, and then he stood back and watched with a skeptical glint in his eye as Rick did the same. “Why’re you asking?”

Rick noticed little of this, as he was busy looking over at Minnow’s table. “Hm? Oh, no reason, I just saw him from over here and thought he looked cute, I mean colorful! And I just, I mean, I figured, um…” deep breath “I was just curious, is all.”

Darren gaped at him. “Rick, are you in love?”

“What? No. No! I literally just saw him first time a minute ago! Dammit Darren, I don’t fall for guys!” And that was true, had been true up until a minute ago. _Was still true, dammit!_ Rick did not believe in love at first sight. Attraction, maybe, but not love, not like this, not like a bucket of ice water to the head, except the water was the sight of pink glitter across the cafeteria and the cold was really a sort of warm pull at his very soul, a realignment of his own internal polarity and, no, no. He had no clue what this was.

Darren, of course, did not believe a word. He knew his friend well enough to know that when he was blushing like some kind of fruit and staring at someone with an actual _wistful_ look in his eyes and called them cute, well… An evil grin spread across his face as he exclaimed, “Well, I know where we’re sitting today!”

“What, no, Darren!” Rick’s expression turned into one of terror as his friend pulled him along towards the only open seat at Minnow’s table. Never mind that part of him had already wanted to sit down there, _what was he supposed to say? He wasn’t ready for this, he would_ never _be ready for this. He was awkward around strangers under normal conditions, dammit! No no no no no…_

He was still screaming internally by the time he was pushed gently but firmly into the last seat at Minnow’s table and Darren said over his shoulder, “is it okay if my friend Rick sits here?”

“Of course it’s alright! Hi Rick!” said Minnow, and he reached his hand, _it really was that delicate_ , across the table for a handshake and, wow, he had bright eyes, and his smile was even more adorable from close up, and was he wearing lipstick or were his lips just naturally that pink? And- _take his hand, Rick, take his hand._

It was too late, though, Minnow had already drawn back his hand, and his smile faltered into something a little more worried. “Are you alright? Your face is kinda red.”

“What? Wuh- I’m fine! Just great. I’m just- I just have horrible friends, I’m- ugh.” After that well-formed and eloquent sentence he averted his eyes to his food and started eating, not really registering _what_ he was eating. He _did_ have terrible friends, he thought. Darren had run off somewhere else the second he could, and now Rick was stuck at a table with Minnow.

Conversation started up again between Minnow and the girls at the table, and Rick found himself listening without hearing. The words were pointless to him, insignificant, instead he listened to Minnow’s voice. A deep, warm, red feeling washed over him every time he heard his bright and loud voice ring across the table. He watched Minnow, when he could get away with it, snuck glances at him. Watched his short, grey-blond hair with a glittering silver stripe of dye up one side, and his bright, light blue eyes, and his dark lashes and pink lips which were always smiling, always talking, and his sparkly pink and yellow jacket with, were those flowers? Yes they were, those weird asymmetric flowers his mom sometimes kept in pots at the windowsill. Orchids? Maybe. Rick had never really cared much about flowers before the dryads, and there were no orchids in the Commune, but he thought that was what they were. Then Minnow laughed at something someone said and Rick was ripped out of his train of thought because that was the most beautiful sound he had ever heard. His mind and heart had tied themselves into a single big, useless knot, and Rick was terrified.

He felt gangly and weird, too tall for his own body. It was not too unusual a feeling for him. Now, though, it had intensified until he felt as if he stood out like a beacon. His awareness was stuck just outside of himself and he felt like awkwardness incarnate compared to the sparkling piece of perfection across from him. _Why was he reacting like this?_

He finished his lunch in record time and then took his tray and ran. He just managed to drop off his tray and round a corner before he had to stop and catch his breath, and not from the exertion of running, that was hardly anything. No, he was hyperventilating merely from sitting across from Minnow for ten minutes, and he was trying to figure out what was up with that. Darren rounded the corner after him just a few seconds later.

“Hey, man. What’d you run away for?” he asked, and Rick snapped. It took him completely by surprise. Usually, Rick never got angry, not really, but maybe spending a week in the Commune had put him more in touch with his anger, and his emotions were already in a violent flux, and he was tired and stressed out and honestly a little scared, and here Darren stood as if he had no clue what he had done… and Rick snapped, and grabbed him by the collar and growled at him.

“What the _fuck_ Darren? _What the fuck?_ Why’d you leave me like that with him?”

“Whoa! Whoa, man, calm down. What’d he do to you?” Darren asked, far too used to growling to be intimidated, having grown up with wolves like he had.

“I- nothing.” As soon as it had arrived, the anger left him, and he let go of Darren’s collar and leaned heavily back against the wall. “Nothing happened. We didn’t even speak, I just- He’s just- I mean, I _can’t_.”

And Darren, wonderful, patient, intelligent Darren, understood.

“Oh, wow. I didn’t realize it was that serious.”

Rick looked up from his arms, curled protectively across his chest as if he was trying to make himself smaller, with a pained look in his eyes that seemed to be trying to communicate a lot of different things at once, and instead just failed at communicating anything. “ _Serious?_ Darren, I just fell head over heels for a guy I saw across the room, who I’ve never even met before, and it’s _messing me up_. I don’t think I’ve felt anything this strongly since… probably ever. I’m pretty sure my tongue would literally tie itself into knots and fall out if I actually tried to talk to him and I _don’t know what to do!_ ”

Darren stayed silent as his friend slowly slid down the wall and put his face in his hands.

“Wow. So, you don’t think this might be some kind of side-effect of the dryad-thing, do you?”

Rick mulled over that for a bit before answering. “No, I don’t think so. Their… influence, is probably why I snapped at you earlier, sorry about that, but I’m pretty sure this is all Minnow.”

“Hey, it’s alright, you were stressed. Well…” Darren sat down beside him, “okay. So, you’re probably not hit by any kind of love spell, because as you said you’ve never met before so the hows and the whys make no sense, but you might want to get checked out just in case. Otherwise, well, try to wait it out? It can’t last forever, after all. It has just been a few minutes, maybe you’re still just reeling from the shock. Wait a few days, then see if you’re ready to talk to him, yeah?”

Rick gave a vague groaning sound from where he sat, and, not for the first time that morning, wished he were back at the Commune. At least there things made sense. Things were peaceful and green and, yes, maybe tempers ran high and hot at times, but it was still affectionate and calm. It made sense. Not this boring gray or violent, world changing pink glitter, just green.

They sat there in the hall until the bell rang for the end of lunch.

\---

The next class they had was English, and Rick hardly listened to the teacher at all. Partially because he was still tired and stressed, but mostly because he shared that class with Minnow. Minnow who was sitting at the first row, drawing in his notebook. Minnow who was shorter than average, yet seemed to fill the whole room. Minnow who had walked into the room, given Rick a small, _gorgeous_ , smile and chosen a seat far away from him. Minnow who was definitely a guy, but who gave Rick more tingly, warm feelings than any well-shaped, lightly clad, friendly girl had ever done before. Minnow who would probably turn around soon from the pressure of Rick’s gaze at the back of his head.

Sometimes Darren, who sat in the seat beside him, would give him a glance with a wordless ‘ _are you okay?’_ and Rick would give one back which meant something like _‘no, not really, but what can you do?’_ before going back to staring at Minnow and not listening to the teacher.

When class was over, along with the school day, _thank god_ , Minnow stayed behind to talk to his friends and Rick had to pass him on the way out. He willed himself not to look. He kept his eyes on the floor and on his hands even as his arm burned with awareness of the boy he was almost touching in passing, which was why he missed the somewhat sad look Minnow sent him as he left.

Once out of the classroom he rubbed his tingling arm, then took off in a sprint. He wove in between the people through the halls, down the stairs and through the front doors before running full sprint two blocks towards his house. Only then did he slow down, breathing hard, and walk the rest of the way. At home, he dropped his backpack on the floor and leaned back against the door with a deep sigh, grinding the heels of his hands into his eyes.

“Welcome home,” said his mom from the kitchen.

“Thanks, mom,” he answered, not moving an inch.

“How was school?”

“Uhhhh…” he pulled off his shoes and went to stand in the door to the kitchen, leaning against the frame. “Stressful.”

“Oh?” His mom looked up at him from what she was making, frying pan toast apparently, with nothing but kind curiosity. “Want to talk about it?”

“Well, Darren spent like, four hours making me explain the whole dryad thing, so there’s that. Also, going directly from the Commune to a high school environment is pretty stressful in itself, and it’s Monday and we’re starting right on with schoolwork again, I think I have homework actually.” Did he? He had no idea. He would have to text Darren about it. “And, well, you know.”

His mom just smiled and nodded, because of course she understood.

“And also I think I fell in love with a guy.”

“What?” That stopped her smiling, if only because it was one thing she had honestly never expected to hear.

“I fell in love with a guy,” he repeated, and she blinked a few times before answering.

“Well, that’s nice. What’s his name?”

Rick smiled at that. Of course, he had not expected his mom to not accept it immediately, but it was still nice to have confirmed.

“Minnow,” he answered.

“Oh, Minnow Simons?”

“Uh, I don’t…”

“Oh, they moved into town very recently. Nice family I think. He’s the boy with the glitter jacket, right?”

“Yeah, that’s him.”

She smiled at him, then frowned as she took in his slightly choked expression.

“Well, this sounds like a long story. Why don’t you sit down and tell me everything? Do you want toast?”

“Yes please, as long as it isn’t burnt.”

And then he sat down and talked about everything. Everything that had happened, and, as best as he could explain, everything he had thought and felt as this strange boy slammed into him like a freight train. It felt nice to get it out, to put proper words to his chaotic emotion to someone who really listened and really cared, and all the while, she was frying toast without a word.

When he was done, she tapped the spatula against the rim of the pan a few times before speaking up.

“Well, we probably should have you checked out for love spells just in case, but with your immune system I really doubt that is it. We’ll drop by that spellworks-guy downtown later tonight, no? But you’re probably just going through the mother of all crushes. These things work themselves out with time, and until then, I’ll always be happy to listen to you.”

Rick finished his toast and excused himself to his room. After that talk, he felt better than he had all day. He texted Darren for the homework and found out that they had five questions in the English textbook to answer. Then he texted him for his notes, because his own were non-existent. Maybe now he would be able to focus on the work instead of… _wonder what Minnow was drawing in his notes?_ No, no. Homework now. Honestly.

He had just finished his, very short and simple, questions by the time his dad came home, over an hour later, and they all sat down to eat. After a little while, his mom broke the silence.

“Rick and I are going downtown for a bit after dinner, is there anything you need while we’re there?”

“Not really. Why?”

She looked over at Rick and he swallowed before answering.

“Well, I fell in love with a guy at school today, and it was kind of sudden and… a lot, so we’re having me checked for love potions just in case. There’s probably no reason to worry, though.”

“Huh,” his dad said, “sounds smart. S’he a nice guy?”

“Uh, I think so?”

“It’s the Simons’ kid,” his mom shot in, “remember them? We met them last Tuesday, they’d just moved in.”

“Oh, yeah. That guy.” His dad gave a laugh. “Well, at least you know he swings your way. Just warn us before you bring him home, yeah?”

“Daaad! I’m not gonna ask him out! I’m freaking out enough as it is.” He was smiling as he said it, though, both at his dad and at the thought of maybe someday bringing Minnow home.

“Well, warn us anyway. Enough about that, though. We’ve hardly been home at the same time since you came back! Tell me about those dryads of yours.”

Rick happily grabbed at the distraction and almost forgot about Minnow for a little while as he delved into explanations and stories about his week at the Commune. His dad always seemed to know what was important.

After dinner, he and his mom visited the spellworker’s office and were told in no uncertain terms that there was no spell, enchantment, potion or anything magical at all on Rick that could have caused that kind of infatuation, and he was most likely simply in love. This was both a relief, for obvious reasons, and a cause for added stress for Rick. There would be no easy way out of this. He really would simply have to wait it out.

In his sleep that night, he dreamt about trees. Trees tangled together by endless amount of bright yellow strings and glitter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, magic resistance is part of the immune system. Why wouldn't it be?


	7. Held Hostage

Darren and his mom turned out to be right; it did get better, sort of. He had more classes with Minnow, and every time he would sit against the wall near the back, and Minnow would take a seat up front, and Rick would watch him. After a few days, he was capable of listening to the teachers again. He still got tongue-tied and stuttering around Minnow. Sometimes he would pass him in the hallways on purpose, just to feel that crazy tingle move through his spine and out to his fingertips, but he would never stop to say hi. He was too nervous, too tingly, too scared he would literally explode from the intensity of his emotions, which abated a little after the first day, but not much.

He was run in half by conflicting instincts. Part of him wanted to stay far away from the source of so much confusion and turmoil, but the other part, which was really only growing larger, wanted nothing more than to sit next to Minnow, to touch his hair, his face, to hold his hand, to look into those bright eyes, to…

It was complicated, living around Minnow. His life had rearranged itself, gained a new center, and he had to adapt. He thought he managed pretty well, considering. He managed five days without exploding or doing anything mind-numbingly stupid, anyway. Then the weekend arrived, and he tried in vain to do anything other than think about Minnow.

“Think of it this way,” Darren said, Sunday evening as they were walking home from a long day outside, “you’re more in love now than you’ll probably ever be again, might as well enjoy it, right? You’ve missed him for two days, so the endorphin rush from seeing him tomorrow will probably be all kinds of crazy. Make a resolution, like, ‘by the end of the week you’ll at least have said hi to him’ or something. It’ll work out, you’ll see.”

Of course it was going to work out. Darren was getting tired of watching Rich watching Minnow and doing nothing about it, so that lunch hour he dragged Rick along and they _both_ sat down at Minnow’s table. Rick still averted his eyes and said nothing all through lunch, his voice seemed to have run away from him, and he still felt too stupidly tall, but Darren easily engaged Minnow in conversation, and Rick tried to pretend he was not hanging on to every single word as if they were worth more than his life.

“So, flowers again?” asked Darren, gesturing towards Minnow’s shirt, which did indeed have a pattern of orchids painted all over it.

“Oh, yeah! I had to paint it myself, because it can be sooo hard to find anything with orchids on it, you know? But I just really, really like orchids! My parents let me have the greenhouse when we moved here, and I don’t have all that many yet, but I’ve been trying to breed and crossbreed them. I’ve been saving up money to see if I can get my hands on some really rare ones, you know? I’m hoping to get good enough to live off it someday.”

Rick did not run away this time. Instead, he sat and listened, and thought. Thought about Minnow who grew flowers in his spare time, who had a passion and ran with it, who made his own shirts just because he could, who wanted to spend the rest of his life surrounded by flowers, and he caught himself imagining waking up in a house full of orchids and glittery decorations, maybe with a dryad child or two visiting for dinner, and _stop. Stop right there. You haven’t even spoken to him yet, it’s not like you’re going to_ marry _him,_ but it was hard to keep the thought away, now that he had thought it. A blush crept across cheeks that had blushed enough in the last week that bright red was close to becoming their natural color. If anyone noticed, they kept quiet about it.

This continued the next few days, and Rick almost got used to eating lunch less than a meter from the creature that had pulled his heart out and ran a thousand volts through it. He was almost used to hearing that voice washing over him every day and his life was teetering on the edge between amazing and agonizing, often occupying both extremes at once. Minnow owned his mind at most times of day, but he could convince himself now that at least he was somewhat used to it. How deep it went, though, never hit him before his parents’ friend Roderick came to visit on Wednesday.

Roderick had been a friend of the family for the longest time, and as a matter of fact, Rick was sort of named after him. Rody, as he preferred being called, had also been the one to tell Rick’s parents, and later Rick himself, about Rick’s invisible antlers. Rody was born with the Sight, if only a weak version, and was not prone to telling lies, which was why anyone believed him when he said the newborn baby had something like horn nubs sticking out of its head. Either way, Rick came home on Wednesday to find Rody sitting on the couch, and Rody’s eyes met his for a fraction of a second before darting up to somewhere above his head and widening in surprise.

“What’d you do to your flowers, Rick?” he blurted out, forgoing any kind of greeting.

Rick lifted an eyebrow. According to Rody, since Rick was about eleven, his antlers had grown flowers in spring. Not very impressive ones, or very many, but small, white ones that resembled the ones you could find on an orange tree. This made sense, because in autumn they tended to turn into oranges of some kind. Pretty small, and deep, blood red oranges, but oranges nonetheless. Now though…

“How would I know? You tell me. Are they damaged or anything?”

“Uhhh…” Rody made a come-hither motion, then stood up and actually grabbed onto Rick’s head for a closer look.

“Rody, this is really weird, can you just tell me what’s going on?”

“You’re growing orchids.”

Rick froze. A quiet sense of dread started pooling in his stomach, or was that glee? No, it was dread. His breath hitched and when his voice came out it was about an octave higher than normal.

“What?”

“Yeah, I think that’s what they are.” Rody let go of his head, but kept his gaze locked right above it. “They’re, uh, bright pink. And blue. Didn’t know flowers could be that color. They’re pretty, I guess? Are you okay?”

Rick was not okay. He was very close to hyperventilating. Orchids. He was growing orchids. Minnow’s favorite flowers had taken over for his normal foliage. Minnow’s flowers were growing directly on _his soul, and how was that even possible? How deep did this feeling go?_

“I’m fine,” he managed to say, not caring that no one believed him, “I just- I need to call Katherine.”

The thought hit him about the same time as he said it. Katherine would know what was going on. She always seemed like she knew something about everything, and even when she did not, she managed to answer his questions anyway. Talking to the dryads sounded like a great idea either way. He should have called them days ago.

He retreated to his room before anyone else got the chance to say anything, then he lay face-down on his bed, dialed the number for the phone in the shed, and tried to control his breathing as the phone rang. She picked up after five rings.

“Hello. Who is this?”

Oh, it was good to hear her voice again.

“Hey Kathy, it’s Rick.”

“Rick! Hi!” He could hear her smile over the phone, how she perked up at his voice, and he had to smile back. “ _Hey, guys, it’s Rick!_ Wait a moment, let me put you on speaker.”

The next few minutes he had to say a few words to every single nearby dryad. Their enthusiasm seemed to be infectious, and he found himself caught up in their mood, just as he had while he lived with them. In the end, though, they had to come back to more immediate matters.

“So, did you call just to say hi?”

Rick laughed a little at that. “Oh, I wish. I really wish I did, Kathy, but I have some things I needed to talk to you about.”

“Oh? Are you in trouble? Couldn’t handle coming back to the city?”

“You have no idea…”

Talking to Katherine was different from talking to his mother. Being essentially sexless creatures, in every sense of the word, dryads’ understanding of romantic love was distanced at best, but she had seen enough allosexual creatures in her life to have some sense of what it meant. She could listen without judgement because she had no preconceptions.

He went into more detail with her than he had before, trying to explain his own whirlwind of emotions. She listened enthusiastically, commenting on everything. When he came to the end of his story, to the part where his flowers had changed and he decided to call her, she made a knowing noise.

“Oh, yes. That happens to people like you.”

“What does? Someone taking over my life and making changes to my soul?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I mean, I don’t know about the taking-over-your-life part, but it’s normal for your kind to grow your beloved’s favorite flowers. I’m sure you’ll have your fruit back sometimes.”

Rick sighed deeply and floofed back into his pillow. “So there’s nothing to worry about except my sudden and ridiculous love for some completely random guy. Good to know.”

“Oh, I doubt it’s random,” she answered. “As far as I know, things like this can depend on any number of underlying-“

“You know,” he interrupted, “I don’t feel like talking about this anymore. How’ve you guys been doing?”

They spent the next few hours talking about less serious things, like who had broken whose arm in a particularly violent round in the clearing, which of the children seemed to be ready to start school after the summer, and what plants were coming in. It was strangely calming for Rick, almost as if he were coming home. Again, he had to marvel at how quickly the Commune had become home for him.


	8. Breaking Free

The next day went the same way the last three had. Rick woke up a little too early, got ready for school, and met Darren on the way. The two of them talked about different things, Rick’s new flowers among them, until classes started, and then they tried to focus on those the next four hours. They ate lunch with Minnow, which was as nerve wrecking as always, and Rick actually managed to exchange a few words with one of the girls. It came out nervously stuttering and he had to hide his face in shame afterwards, but he did say something. Then they went back to classes and later, home.

Friday went a bit differently.

The morning went the same way as the rest of the week, though there was the added stress of the approaching two Minnow-free days. Then lunch hour came around and Rick and Darren entered the cafeteria to find it empty of loud, glittering guys.

In a way, it was nice for Rick to eat his lunch again without already having his stomach full of wriggly things with many legs, but on the other hand, he spent more time searching the crowd for yellow and pink than he did eating.

“You know his classes are probably just running late, right?” said Darren after the fifth time in a minute Rick turned in his seat to look towards the door. Rick made a vague agreeing noise.

“Yeah… yeah, I know. I just- I’m just being neurotic is all.”

Darren gave a lopsided smile.

“Yes. I know. You’ve been neurotic for the last two weeks.”

They laughed at that, and then Rick tried to focus on his food. Five minutes later, his focus was broken entirely.

“Hey, Glitter!” he heard someone say behind him.

It was not very loud, barely louder than normal speech, and it came from almost across the room, but he heard it well enough. He turned around immediately and automatically, because there was only one person in school who could be addressed that way.

In the door to the hallway stood Minnow, just as glittery and chipper as always. Approaching him were three guys Rick recognized from football games. Not that he watched football games much, but anyone would recognize the tallest of the three, Mathis Davis, sport star and major jerk. The kind of person with far more brawns than brains and an even bigger ego. He gave all athletes a bad name. Rick did not like the look he was giving Minnow.

He watched as the four of them disappeared into the hallway, and his blood ran cold. He stood up to follow, and Darren asked him something, but he ignored it. There was a cold fire burning in his heart, burning away everything that was irrelevant, and he had never felt taller, never felt more secure in his strength. His movements were ice and steel, and if the lights in the cafeteria had not been too diffuse to cast shadows, his would have drawn more attention than he did. As it was, his head just felt strangely heavy, and he crossed the room unnoticed.

The cold did not fade as he entered the hallway. If anything, it deepened, burning and freezing into his skin from the inside out. Mathis had Minnow up against a wall, looking down at him with a smug grin, his two friends stood on each side of him, playing up the role of henchmen, and Minnow looked scared. Gone was the sweet smile and the confident, fluttering hand gestures, and instead he was pressed up against the wall, looking like a cornered animal. The cold inside of Rick took one look at that small, scared shape and _growled_.

“Hey! Leave him alone!”

All eyes turned to him, and the closest henchman took a tiny step back. A small part of Rick wondered what he must look like, to make a guy that big flinch back, but he dismissed the thought. It was irrelevant. The sidekicks were irrelevant. Annoying, sure, but hardly anything more than side notes. Mathis was the one who spoke.

“This is none o’ your business. Fuck off.”

No one stepped up to stop him as Rick placed himself between Minnow and Mathis. The cold fire seemed to blur his vision strangely, washing away the walls and the sidekicks, leaving nothing real except for Mathis in front of him, and Minnow’s hands grasping onto the back of his shirt, the hitch in his breath behind him.

“You already look like a caveman, Mathis. Don’t act like one too.”

There was no stutter in his voice now, no waver. His back burned from Minnow’s touch, but it only served to fuel the cold fire. His pose was naturally confident and his words were nothing but hard ice and calm, cold anger.

Mathis laughed in false bravado.

“Aww, are you his boyfriend? Look guys,” he elbowed his friends lightly, just to remind them that they were still bigger, stronger and more people, they had no reason at all to be scared. “The little bird has his-“

“ _Leave_ , Mathis. _Now_.”

The interruption cut through Mathis’ mocking like a knife. His friends were getting distinctly uncomfortable, and at least one looked like he was thinking of running away, but Mathis just got angrier.

“Or _what_ , sweetheart? You gonna fight me? You want a fight, is that it?”

Rick just raised his chin a little and stared. Mathis’ eyes narrowed.

He could see the punch coming from a mile away, but this close and with Minnow at his back, there was little he could do to avoid it. He heard Minnow gasp as it connected with his cheekbone, and pain blossomed across his face. He should be reeling from it, but it was- not dulled exactly. He observed his own pain with a kind of detached indifference. He could worry about it later. Of course, it hurt to high heaven, but the cold fire was stronger.

He caught Mathis’ fist on its way back, and pulled him down into a punch of his own, then, just as Mathis tried to pull his fist back, already off-balance from the blow to his face, he let go and kicked him in the chest.

He went sprawling. That little, irrelevant voice in the back of Rick’s head informed him that he had never hit anything that hard before, let alone a person. Mathis let out a pained breath and raised his hand to his face. On the sidelines, one of the sidekicks said something that sounded like “yeah, no” and ran off, the other one on his heels.

Rick took a step forward. Mathis lifted his eyes to meet his, and a curse died on his lips. _He_ was to one who looked scared now. _As he should,_ whispered the cold fire. _He dared to threaten those you love, dared to get his dirty hands close to him. He should fear you, fear your anger. Hurt him. Hurt him!_

“You done now?” was what he said, even as the temptation to punch the boy again got stronger. He looked so small and worthless lying on the floor like that.

“What- Dude, I didn’t-” Mathis struggled to find his words. Rick did not give him time to finish his sentence.

“Let me be clear, then. I don’t care who you are or how many friends you have, if you fuck with my friends again, I _will know_ , and I will not be this nice. Understood?”

Mathis scrambled to his feet and backed up against the other wall.

“You’re crazy,” he said, and then he ran after his friends. Rick watched him go with cold contempt.

He turned around suddenly to see Minnow still standing against the wall, looking at him with wide eyes. He looked unharmed, but still…

“Are you o- you okay? They didn’t hurt you, did they?”

Ugh, the stutter was back. At least Minnow shook his head. Then he reached his hand up to brush his fingers over Rick’s cheek, and his heart contracted in a strange way.

“No, but that looks kinda bad. Are you okay?”

Oh, yeah. He had been punched. The pain came back into focus now, and he recoiled from Minnow’s hand, raised his own to check. Yep, that was definitely going to leave a bruise.

“I’m- I’m okay.” He had to look away from Minnow now that he was sure he was unhurt. His heart raced a thousand beats per minute. His hand traveled absentmindedly up to drag through his hair, and closed around something soft and smooth. “It’s just a- a… thing. It’s noth- it’s nothing to worry about.”

“Rick, you saved my ass.” Minnow withdrew his hand a little and started gesturing. The hand flutters were back, and they pulled Rick’s eyes in like magnets. “Seriously, that was awesome! Thank y-“

“Here you go!” Rick had not meant to interrupt, but with the cold anger replaced by the powerful tingling numbness he always felt around Minnow, his brain did not work like it should. He thrust his hand forward and dropped the object in it into Minnow’s open palm, and then he was overtaken with embarrassment and fled.

Minnow was left gaping, surprised, confused and staring at the bright pink and blue orchid resting in his hand.


	9. Freedom

Minnow was late for his next class.

The second he walked in the door, Rick felt his face redden in a blush, and dropped it into his hands. He still heard the footsteps clearly as Minnow walked up the line of desks towards him. He still heard as Darren shifted his stuff to the next desk over so Minnow could sit next to him. He still felt Minnows presence far too strongly, when he could still feel the memory of his hands burning on his back.

“Hey, I wanted to thank you for helping me out. And for the flower, I guess.”

Rick gave a shrug so small it hardly existed.

“Really, though. Séra did run to find a teacher, but if you hadn’t been there, I would have been in a lot of trouble. And the way you dealt with them! You almost looked like an action hero! Except you’re real, not a movie character, and I was kinda surprised? Because, I mean…”

Rick hid his face deeper into his arms, now folded on the desk. Was his face on fire? He was pretty sure his face was on fire. Really, some friends his classmates were, not even telling him his face had spontaneously combusted.

“I didn’t think you- I mean, you’ve been kinda weird? Around me? And, I thought that you- that it was because you thought I was, well. I thought you didn’t really like me? And then you do that, and it’s seriously awesome and amazing, and I didn’t really think you would do something like that? But then you did, and I, um- I’m really glad I was wrong? Because I, um, I kinda like you a lot?”

Rick was pretty sure his skin color would never return to normal. It was impossible now. The blush had reached all the way down his arms, and there had to be a point where it was so much it became permanent. Minnow’s words seeped through his bones and settled somewhere around his diaphragm. It took him about five endless seconds to find his voice again, and when he did, it was barely a mumble.

“I like you a lot too.”

His arms migrated to curl over his head, and his eyes were squeezed shut, but he could feel Minnow smile beside him.

“Great! That’s great. Because, like I said, I wanted to thank you, and it’s really hot out today, so I thought, after school, we can go out and have ice cream together, you and me? I’ll buy. Sound good?”

Rick just hummed an affirmative and nodded from beneath his arms. Internally, he was screaming incoherently, but most of it sounded positive.

They sat there in silence for a few minutes before Minnow spoke again.

“Oh, shit!”

“What?” Rick lifted his head from the desk or the first time, and saw that Minnow was suddenly staring into thin air.

“Principal wanted to see you. I forgot. You should probably run.”

He was out of his seat before Minnow had finished speaking. The principal was not a woman one left waiting.

\---

Rick entered the old harpy’s office panting from the run. She looked up from her computer with a raised brow.

“Rick Harland?”

“That’s me.”

There were two chairs in front of her desk, one already filled by Mathis Davis. She gestured towards the other.

“You’re late. Sit down.”

“I know,” he said as he did, “There was a- I mean- I’m sorry. It wasn’t on purpose.”

She regarded him for a moment before she seemed to decide she had more important things to focus on.

“I see. I assume you know why you’re here?”

He glanced over at Mathis, who had a bruise blossoming across his cheek remarkably similar to Rick’s own.

“I could… venture a guess.”

Her lip twitched just a little, and when she met his eyes again, he thought her expression seemed a little kinder.

“I suppose you could. Well, Rick, I’ve already heard most of what happened, but school policy requires me to listen to as many sides of a case as possible, so if you would, explain the events of your and Mathis’ fight in your own words?”

Rick took a deep breath. Okay, this could have been worse. Exhale.

“Alright, so, I was eating lunch with my friend when I saw Mathis and two of his friends talking to Minnow over by the hallway.”

“Would you be able to identify those friends?”

“Uh, maybe if I saw a picture? Probably not. I wasn’t really focusing on them. Sorry.”

“That is all right. Please continue.”

“Right, so…”

He explained as well as he could. The principal shot in a few more small questions, and Mathis twitched as if he was constantly on the verge of arguing, but a few minutes later, everything was on the table. The principal sat back in silence for a few moments.

“That is… more or less what I expected. You understand I’ll have to inform your parents about this?”

Rick nodded.

“Well then, one more question before I let you go. Do you think do you think what you did was the right thing to do?”

The question came right out of left field for him. Was it _right_ , what had happened? When he looked back at it now, remembered how everything had seemed to go blurry, he was suddenly reminded of the dryads. He was reminded of Katherine, explaining how it felt to lose control, and how she both loved and hated it, was reminded of old scars and stories of worse things that came with losing your judgement to anger.

He remembered his fist hitting another person’s face, watching his opponent lay on the floor and… enjoying it, yes. He remembered that muted, smoldering glee at being stronger, at being in the right, but… he also remembered Minnow cornered and scared. He remembered asking them to leave before moving. He remembered being tempted to hit again and not doing it.

“I-” he began, after what had to be far too long a pause, “I don’t know, exactly, about the right or wrong about it. I wish it didn’t get violent, I do, but… I don’t _regret_ it.”

“I see.” She nodded at him. “You should get back to your class now, you’ve missed more than enough.”

He thanked her and made to leave, but after a few steps, Mathis finally spoke up.

“That is complete bullshit!”

Rick froze. A vague hint of a chill returned to his limbs. It prodded at him to turn around, to tell this pointless creature exactly how small he was. Mathis started up an argument about him not deserving this kind of treatment, or something. Whatever. The words were unimportant. Rick just wanted to turn around and shut him up. It would be so easy, too. Just a single step, a few words in threat and…

He left the room.

Let dead things lie, they said, and this thing was over. The school could take care of things from here on.

Minnow smiled at him as he reentered the classroom, and that was more important than anything else anyway.

\---

They did go out for ice cream after school. They sat at a table by the local Dippin’ Dots and talked for a while. Mostly, Minnow talked and Rick blushed and tried to focus on his apple-and-cinnamon ice cream, but he did speak occasionally. Within the first hour, he had almost lost his stutter. The fact that Minnow smiled just a little but wider every time he spoke was a big help.

The conversation flowed quickly and easily, jumping from topic to topic like a small frog. Before they knew it, three hours had passed, and they were both craving something slightly more substantial than ice cream. After a few stomach rumbles and sheepish smiles, they got up and started walking back. Rick felt sort of as if he was walking on clouds. With Minnow being so short, he felt even more awkwardly tall than usual, but somehow, with him, it felt right.

They stopped at the gate to Rick’s driveway. They stood and looked at each other in silence while Rick tried to muster the courage to say the words he had been chewing on for the last few hours. In the last second before the silence turned awkward, he found it.

“Go out with me?”

The words came out in a rush, halfway mumbled, but they were clear enough to hear. Minnow blinked a few times in surprise before his face broke out in the biggest grin Rick had seen on him.

“Oh my gosh! I was sure I was gonna have to ask you! Sure I will! I had fun today. You’re a really cool guy, Rick.”

Rick, who did not feel very cool at the moment, had once again lost his ability to speak, but he smiled almost as wide as Minnow. Then Minnow’s smile turned slightly more mischievous. He tilted his head in thought for a second, before he stood up on his toes to press his lips to Rick’s.

It only lasted a split second, but Rick felt like he had gotten an electric shock. The blush, which had receded almost completely, came back with a vengeance, and he froze, looking like a stranded fish.

Minnow chuckled at the sight of him, before saying, “Well, I better get going before you actually explode. See you tomorrow!” and running off.

Rick stood frozen for a full minute more before he made his way through the front door, going by muscle memory, as he was too dazed to see what he was doing. His mom met him in the hallway.

“You’re late. Were you out?”

“Mhm,” he hummed in answer.

“Well, the school called, said you got in a fight.”

“Mhm.”

“Are you okay? That bruise looks pretty bad.”

“I’m fine.”

His voice was breathless, and a full octave higher than normal. His mom studied his face with a worried look before she smiled.

“I guess you can tell me that story later, but for now, do you know you’ve got lipstick on you?”

Rick’s hand shot to his face, and sure enough, there was lipstick, light pink and sweet. He licked his lips.

“Oh”

“Rick, what happened today?”

He met her eyes and an effortless, almost goofy smile spread on his face.

“I think I have a boyfriend.”

“So you did ask him out!” came his dad’s voice from the kitchen, and Rick laughed a breathless and tired kind of laugh. What a day.

He heated up some leftovers from dinner and retreated to his room. Then he tried to work through the day’s events in his head. Eventually, he gave up and resorted to playing video games on his Moveable until he was too tired to focus. He fell asleep that night with three words echoing in his head.

_See you tomorrow._


	10. Darren's story

Darren Bader’s parents were both werewolves. Specifically, his father was your average lunar wolf, while his mother was a less typical skinwalker wolf. This was the source of some issues for Darren. He could shift at will like his mother, but was still bound by the moon’s phases. His shifting would get easier the closer he was to the full moon, like a strange balance between human and wolf that only equalized at the half moon. At the new moon, he could hardly shift at all, and during full moons staying human was almost impossible.

His wolf form was also affected by the cross. His mind would turn more animalistic while shifted, though not to the extent of a lunar wolf. In theory, this should have been easier to deal with than it was for them, but as his almost-forced shifting was spread over several days around the full moon instead of just the night of, it was really far more trouble. Physically, between the extreme explosive strength of the lunar wolves and the relentless stamina of the skinwalkers, he somehow ended up with neither. At least he had gorgeous fur.

It was never a crippling problem, though, more of an annoyance. Not being very athletic, while unusual for werewolves, was never a thing that bothered him much. His pack still accepted him, and he had all the opportunity he could want to focus on more cerebral interests.

In third grade, he met Rick, and they bonded over stories. Books, movies, plot-heavy video games, comics, Darren’s grandmother’s old werewolf myths, and anything they could ever come up with themselves. They kept it up for a long time, introducing each other to anything good they could find, discussing everything and building further on each other’s theories and stories. They had an ongoing game of D,D&moreD for several years where most of the more math-intensive rules were ignored and only a couple of actual quest were fulfilled, but which had an expansive map, history and a cast of several dozen unique characters.

When Darren, at the age of fifteen, had his huge emotional crisis because of his own stressful and irregular shifting, Rick stayed with him, and even slept over with his pack for several days to help him through it. When Rick really started asking questions about his own existence, Darren was the one who helped him search for answers the most. One of his many cousins was the first one to make the connection with the antlered dryads.

They were as close as friends could get. Rick because he was Rick, and Darren because loyalty was an important trait for both lunar wolves and skinwalkers.

\---

When Rick and Minnow got together, Darren did what any good friend would do, and tried to stay out of the way. It worked for about the duration of the weekend.

Come Monday, they met up like they always did, and at lunch, the tree of them fell together as if they had always been friends. Darren had already spent quite a bit of time with Minnow and his friends (Séra, Josephine and Adena) over the last week, and even though it was mostly because he was trying to bring together him and Rick, they did honestly enjoy each other’s company. It helped a lot that Minnow was both an easy person to like, and someone who tried to like everyone else.

The very next weekend, the tree of them came over to Darren’s pack, and they took in the sparkling newcomer with the same smiles they gave any friends of their children.

The next few months were great, even though they had exams and assignments almost constantly before summer vacation. They spent most of their free time together, doing whatever, and after a while, Darren and Josephine started spending time on their own, leaving the boyfriends in each other’s company.

Still, he sometimes felt like the two of them deserved more time to just be lovey-dovey, so when summer arrived and Rick invited him along with the two of them for the trip to the dryad commune, Darren declined.

“I can come with some other time,” he said, “but the pack wants me home this year, and so does Josie I think. You two have fun.”

And that was all right. After all, he had always enjoyed hearing about adventures more than living them himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have you ever made a side character who took on a life of their own? This guy was the first time that happened to me, so I had to give him his own chapter, even if it's short.  
> Please ask me things about werewolves. I have so many headcanons it hurts.


	11. Epilogue

The first time Rick took the bus to South Dakota, it had been the longest trip of his life. His phone ran out of battery within the first hour, and he spent the rest alone with his thoughts. He was going to a place he had never seen before, to find people he knew nothing about, in a last hope of finding answers to the most important questions of his life. To say he was stressed would have been an understatement.

The second time he took the trip, time passed almost too fast. This time, he was going to a place he knew and people he liked, with the sole intention of having a good time, and most importantly, he had Minnow with him.

They had been together for over a month by then, and Rick had almost stopped blushing around him. He still felt lanky and awkward at times, but the good feelings far outstripped the bad. Sometimes, he even found himself wondering if he would be waking up soon to find out it had all been one long dream, but if it was, he was still dreaming. And now he was going to spend the entire summer with no one but Minnow and the dryads. If only he knew what to expect.

“I mean- I called them to say you were coming, and they said it would probably be fine, but I just- I’ve never seen them with anyone else than me, and I think I’m kind of an exception, and-“

“You worry too much Ricky,” Minnow said, and cut off his increasingly frantic sentence. “They’re your friends, and I’m sure it’ll be fine. After all, who can resist this smile?” He pointed to himself, and Rick had to concede that that was a good point.

Maiken met them at the station, and immediately pulled Rick into a hug.

“Oof-“ was all he could say before she put him down again. “Do you really have to do that every time?”

“Yes!” she smiled back. “Or else I won’t get to you at all before everyone else snatches you. I won’t even tell you what I had to do to be the one to pick you up. This your boyfriend?”

“Yes I am!” Minnow said, smiling as wide as she was, and reached out a hand. “I’m Minnow. Nice to meet you.”

“Maiken, nice to meet you too,” she said, and took his hand, then she looked confused. “Have we met before?”

“Nooo?” he said. “I really think I would have remembered that.”

“Are you sure? Because you kind of remind me of… something. In a way. I don’t know. It’s probably nothing to worry about though. Let’s go!”

Soon enough, the confusion was forgotten behind chipper chitchat about everything and anything, and only remembered when they arrived, and Katherine looked at Minnow as if she had seen a ghost.

“You’re… dating Mizar,” she said, and Rick’s brain stopped working for a second.

“What?”

“I said… urgh, I think we need to sit down and talk for a bit.”

She then ushered them both over to the dinner tables and sat them down, while Maiken said something in the background that sounded like “Oooh, that’s what it was!”

Then she told them, told Minnow, mostly, that he had a brother, that brother was a demon, and he would most likely be contacted by that brother some time during his life.

“I wish I could tell you more, but I’ve only really met Mizar once during my life, and they’re Alcor’s business. We didn’t want to ask too many questions. Is that alright?”

“Yeah, sure,” Minnow said. He had really taken the whole thing very well. “It’s not your fault you don’t know. It’s awesome that you know anything about it at all, really, and I mean, it’s pretty surprising but… wait. No but. It’s pretty surprising. It’s alright though. At least now I know, right, Rick?”

“Huh?” Rick answered eloquently, as he was still in shock.

“I’m saying it’s not- I mean, it’s not like you’re going to leave me over this or anything, right?”

Rick stared at his boyfriend for a few moments before breaking out in hysterical laughter.

“Soooo, that’s a no? I’m gonna take that as a no.”

He managed to stop laughing enough to choke out, “Yeah, that’s a no. You’re not getting rid of me that easily.”

“Alright then,” Minnow said happily, “I’m not gonna worry.”

\---

Nothing else happened on that front for the next few days. Minnow fell into life at the commune as if he belonged there, several of the older dryads recognized him as Mizar, and a few of them pulled out some tacky, hand-knitted sweaters the last one had made them. It seemed to have turned out fine, and they had almost forgotten about it until someone ran up to them eating lunch on the fourth day there.

“He’s here!” she hissed, bending down and waving her hands.

“Who is?” Rick asked, though he knew the answer the second he asked.

“Alcor! He’s over at the ledge by the clearing. I figured you guys would want to see him.”

Rick and Minnow looked at each other and nodded. Then they stood up and walked. It seemed like they had to, really. Better to know who they were about to meet than let him surprise them. They found him easily enough. He sat cross-legged in midair, leaning against a tree, eating popcorn from a paper box, and watching as two dryads went at it in the clearing. Rick only knew the name of one of them, Iben.

Alcor looked exactly as he did in all the pictures, floating top hat, formal suit and all. His wings hung half-unfurled behind him, occasionally moving a little. As they watched, one casually reached up and brushed a crumb off his pant leg. For all that he knew this was one of the most dangerous creatures in the world, Rick could not make himself feel intimidated.

They walked over to stand beside the demon, and for a few minutes, all three of them simply kept quiet and watched the fight.

“Popcorn?” Alcor asked, and held out the box to the two of them. Rick looked over to meet black and golden eyes, and realized that the demon found the situation just as funny as Rick found it absurdly mundane.

“Sure,” he said, and took a handful, as did Minnow.

“This is really weird popcorn,” Minnow said after a taste.

“Eh, it’s old school. More salt, less… spices. I don’t get why you guys put spices on popcorn, it’s weird.”

“You’re weird.”

“ _I’m_ over four and a half century old. I’m allowed to be weird. You guys have no excuse.”

“You’re a dick.”

“Sure am. _Punch her in the face!_ ”

The last part was shouted at the dryads who were still fighting in the clearing. Iben shouted, “ _fuck you!_ ” back, and made a rude hand gesture, and Alcor laughed.

“Man, I love these guys. Anyone else, they’re too scared to say stuff like that to me, but you get these girls angry, they say anything to anyone. It’s hilarious.”

Rick ate weird, unseasoned popcorn in silence a little longer before he had to ask.

“Alright, fine! I give up. Why am I not freaking out about this?”

Alcor burst out laughing, and Minnow looked up in surprise.

“Oh, yeah,” he said, “that’s true. I figured I wasn’t freaking out because, you know, it’s me, but you usually freak out like a normal person, so why not?”

“I’m sorry, that’s my fault,” said Alcor, not sounding as if he was sorry at all. “A lot of things are, when you get down to it. We’ve met in a few of your previous lives, and the first time, I freaked you out so bad I just, can’t anymore. Not for the next ten reincarnations at least.”

“Ah. Weird.”

They mostly watched the fighting after that, and ate popcorn. Rick knew he would ask questions later. Maybe he would finally get his answers, maybe not, but not right now. Now was a quiet moment. Anything else was in the future.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's it. That's the end of it. Comments are love, people, tell me what you thought.


End file.
